Inkjet technology has expanded its application to high-speed, commercial and industrial printing, in addition to home and office usage. This technology is a non-impact printing method in which an electronic signal controls and directs droplets or a stream of ink that can be deposited on a wide variety of substrates. Current inkjet printing technology involves forcing the ink drops through small nozzles by thermal ejection, piezoelectric pressure or oscillation, onto the surface of a large diversity of media.
In inkjet printing method, both the media and the ink play an important role in the overall image quality and permanence of the printed images. In addition to ink composition, a pre-treatment composition can be applied before an ink composition is established on the print recording media. Such pre-treatment composition can significantly improve printing characteristics and attributes of the image.
As expanded colors and appearances are sought for home and office decorative printing, developments have been made to provide prints, as well as printed articles, that have specific features and that can be printed on diverse recording substrates, such as, for examples, packaging and labels. Within the use of such diverse recording media, pre-treatment formulations are often used in view of providing higher quality printed images. Specific colored ink, such as white inks, are valuable for providing good visibility when printing on said specific media. Indeed, said media can have surface that can be transparent and/or colored.
Accordingly, investigations continue into ink compositions and/or pre-treatment formulations that exhibit specific properties such as, for example, specific colors and that can help to print of diverse media surfaces.